Senior year is unquestionably the busiest, and the hardest, of your high school years.
You must continue to work in school at your highest academic level, and you must spend extra time on your college applications, keep up with your extracurricular activities, and cope with the emotional ups and downs of looking ahead to separating from your family. This is an exciting, challenging, and sometimes difficult time for you as well as your family. In preparation for your senior year and the application process, some of the following tips will help insure a smoother process for you:
ỉ The summer following junior year is important! Rest, work, visit colleges, pursue an interest, follow your passion, broaden your personal experience, and do community volunteer work. Highly selective colleges ask how you spend your spare time and, if you have a particular talent, developing interest, or passion, they expect to see you follow through with it at a consistent level. Colleges seek students who have interesting, developing interests, and they often equate this with people who will contribute to campus life when they are college students.
ỉ Read and write! Always have a book you are reading for pleasure. Read editorials for three reasons: To broaden your horizons and familiarize yourself with current issues; to develop your vocabulary; and to encounter good writing style. Not only will these activities help you with your SAT, but they will make you more interesting to colleges, and just perhaps, a new interest will be sparked that moves you in a new direction. You may also find inspiration for your college essay. Remember, this is a process!
ỉ Complete your Senior Questionnaire during the summer (you can find it at the
Counseling website), and turn it in to your counselor. This is your chance to reflect – essay ideas may come from it. Be thorough – if you have not seen your counselor much during your high school years, this may be a starting point to help him or her get to know you better. Believe us when we say that we really do rely on the questionnaire to give us more information about what makes you tick and to use as a starting point for
conversation with you. PARENTS: Your input is invaluable – you provide another perspective on your teenager. We truly appreciate your thoughts and ask that you please return your input (the last page in the questionnaire) to your son or daughter’s counselor – mail it in separately if necessary.
ỉ NOTE: In the fall of your senior year, you will meet with your counselor in the order she/he receives your Senior Questionnaire. At that initial meeting, if you are applying to private schools, you will receive a folder with information about our process and how it unfolds in Naviance, financial aid resources, our recommendation process and forms teachers will need from you, how to send your test scores to colleges, as well as
checklists to see you through the process. You will also receive information on the UC and CSU applications. Every high school has a system that works for them – this is ours and we ask that you respect it. Keep on top of the process!
THE COLLEGE APPLICATION PROCESS and OPTIONS
The application process actually begins when you decide where you will apply.
Hopefully you will have a chance to visit campuses, but if you cannot, we strongly recommend you meet with the college admissions officers who visit Bishop O’Dowd (check College Visits on Family Connection often!). Typically an admissions officer covers a specific region of the United States with the express responsibility of getting to know the students, their counselors, and the high schools in their region. This contact can be particularly important since the
admissions officer who visits is usually the first reader of your application, and he or she will be the admissions committee member who is most familiar with Bishop O’Dowd and the quality of our students. This person can be a strong advocate for you. Make your presence known!!
As you begin to sort out your list, you will no doubt find some schools you love and others you merely like, although throughout the months of application and waiting, the ‘loves’
and ‘likes’ often switch places. The best advice we can give you is to learn as much as you can about each of the schools on your list. Make contact with the admissions office in each of these schools – learn to love each one. There are good reasons for this:
ỉ If your first choice school rejects you, you will be happy with the schools that do accept you.
ỉ If you have visited and/or made contact several times, the admissions committee takes this a strong sign of your interest. If you never make contact, they could turn you down because they feel you are not interested, even if you are a dynamite student.
ỉ Ask yourself two questions: “Can I get in?” and “Do I want to get in?” You may not be able to answer “yes” to the first question for every college, but you must be able to answer “yes” to the second for every single college to which you apply.
Admissions Options
When considering all of the following options, keep in mind that this is a process, and you will change throughout the months to come. This final year and a half of high school is a time of tremendous growth. Think about how different you are now from when you entered high school as a freshman. Assuming you are reading this in the spring of your junior year, you will be considerably different a year from now when you are weighing decisions in your senior spring. By keeping an open-minded perspective, you will have an easier time making and accepting your decisions. You are stepping into new territory that is rich and varied, exciting and daunting, and finally, a big decision. Explore the territory carefully and intelligently – you may never again have such an opportunity.
Regular Admissions: Most colleges require applications to be submitted by a specific deadline, and members of the admissions committees begin reading an applicant’s file once all the
required documents are received. You will be considered within the larger pool of applicants and colleges will notify you of their admissions decisions by the commonly adhered to date of
ỉ The University of California application must be filed between November 1 and November 30. It will not be accepted before the 1st or after the 30th. All
applications are to be filed online. The application for the coming application season opens on August 1. All of your SAT/ACT testing must be completed by December of your senior year – and you are responsible for having test agencies send the scores.
ỉ The California State Universities’ application must be filed between October 1 and November 30. Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, the most selective of the CSU schools, asks that students file their applications by October 31. Check the CSU Mentor website to verify Cal Poly’s deadline and to see if any other CSU schools have an earlier application deadline. As with the UC system, all testing must be completed by December of your senior year, and in the case of Cal Poly, October may be the last testing date they will accept. Cal Poly prefers the ACT.
ỉ Private universities, liberal arts colleges, and out-of-state public universities have variable deadline dates ranging anywhere from November 15 (Scripps) and December 10 (USC) – both these deadlines apply if you want to be
considered for a merit scholarship – to anywhere up to March 1 and sometimes later. These deadlines vary from school to school and sometimes from year to year. Be serious in observing these deadlines. Schools that have later deadlines will usually accept January test scores, but always verify this with the college if you intend to sit for a January test.
Early Decision: A limited number of schools offer an ED Plan under which you file your application by a specified date (usually November 1 or 15) and you learn of the school’s decision by December 15. This is a very serious matter and when you apply, you are required to sign a statement that specifies you understand the acceptance is binding, e.g. you must accept the offer and withdraw all other applications. This is a binding contract between you and the college. The only recourse to backing out of an acceptance is if the financial aid is not sufficient, which award you may not receive until much later. Consider all of the following before applying ED to any school:
ỉ The applicant pool is extremely competitive for the type of students that the college accepts. Check the college website for the statistics of the current freshman class. To be competitive, you should be in the upper 5 to 10%
(minimally) of their current freshman class (grades and scores), and there should be something particularly unique about you that will make you stand out among the applicants. Statistics vary with each college – you do not have to be a rocket scientist at every school – some are more competitive than others.
ỉ You should have visited the campus, taken the tour and attended the information session, at the very least. If you have not done this, unless you have won the Intel Science Talent Search or done something else extraordinary, the college will likely turn you down – how can they assume you will like the campus if you have not visited?
ỉ If you need to compare financial aid offers, or if you need to show strong fall grades to boost your application, ED is not an appropriate option, If you can be assured that the college will meet your financial need, this is a risky option.
Please heck with your counselor for more information on the nuances of Early
Decision. You will hear that the odds for acceptance are higher under an ED plan, however this is only true if you are extremely competitive for the school, e.g. your grades and test scores are similar to those of the students they accept early. Be realistic about who you are.
ỉ As with regular admissions, you must continue to work in school at your highest level, keeping your grades up throughout your senior year. Often counselors receive phone calls to find out how you are doing. Counselors are ethically bound to respond to their questions. If there are erratic grades on the transcript we send, they take particular note and will want to know your progress report grades. You must be aware that your application will be taken very seriously and you will be closely scrutinized. Anything lower than the grades you consistently earn in high school may jeopardize your application.
ỉ Colleges will give you one of three decisions: Accept, defer to the regular pool, or deny altogether. If you need to show a strong senior fall, and you are
developing as a leader in the fall, regular decision is a better option and will increase your chances of getting in. Colleges like to see growth and will take that into consideration – they cannot always see that in an ED candidate.
ỉ Notify your counselor immediately once you learn of your ED decision. If you are accepted under an ED plan, you must immediately withdraw your applications from the other colleges to which you applied. Your counselor will send your Mid-Year Report only to the ED school that accepted you.
ỉ Your counselor can help you assess your realistic chances – remember that they have shepherded students through many cycles of applications, and they are well aware of how Bishop O’Dowd students fare at particular schools. Consider their advice.
Early Action: Many private schools offer an EA Plan. As with ED, you must file your application by an earlier date, and the school will notify you of their decision, usually by December 15, although there can be variance with the reply date. You may also submit regular decision applications to other schools and keep those applications active even after you are admitted under an EA plan. You are not bound to accept the school’s offer of admission and may wait until the common reply date of May 1 to decide which college admissions offer you will accept. In the last few years, some highly selective colleges have moved to a “Restricted Choice/Early Action” (SCEA) program, which specifies that you may not apply to any other school’s EA or ED plan. The acceptance you receive however is non-binding. We expect that more schools will move in this direction. Read application materials very carefully to determine the limits of your application.
Service Academies/ROTC: West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy, as well as ROTC programs have unique application procedures. The academies offer a free education in exchange for service in a branch of the Armed Forces. You must begin the process early – no later than spring of your Junior year – and be in touch with your local recruiting office. You must also contact local Congressional district office. Appointments are very competitive, and in addition to top grades and scores, leadership experience during high school is an important criterion. See your counselor for more information.
Candidates’ Reply Date Agreement: Colleges notify students of their admissions decisions by April 1, although some schools may stretch notification for an additional week. You do not need to commit to the college of your choice until May 1, at which time you must also notify the colleges whose admissions offer you are not accepting. April is a good time to visit – for some of you it will be the first time, for others to take another look – does the college still meet your expectations?
Wait List: In addition to accepting or denying students, private colleges develop wait lists of students they like but cannot accommodate with an acceptance. Since colleges gamble on how many students will accept their offers, the wait list serves as an insurance policy in case they do not reach their numbers (their “yield”). You will be asked if you wish to remain on the wait list.
If you choose to remain on the list, you must still accept at one of your other colleges to hold a place for yourself in the fall freshman class. Typically a college may place hundreds of
students on a wait list. If you elect to stay on one, check with your counselor on how you and he or she can advocate for your admission. If this is your first choice school, be proactive but do not be obnoxious. There is a delicate balance, and your counselor can help you determine the best course of action.